<![CDATA[beyond the magnolias - Archived Profiles]]>

<![CDATA[beyond the magnolias - Archived Profiles]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 20:11:25 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[The Mirabal Sisters: Iconic Figures of Resistance]]>Tue, 30 Jan 2018 13:23:03 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/the-mirabal-sisters-iconic-figures-of-resistance

by Elize Villalobos

The Mirabal Sisters. Photo by Alvaro Diaz y Adony Flores. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

As the new year begins, it is a hard necessity that we reflect upon the tumultuous political events that have taken place in the U.S. and across the globe that have shaken people’s collective sense of security. However, for today, rather than analyze circumstances that you already know are dire, it seems prudent to share a story which might revitalize your hopes for this new year, a story in which organized resistance thwarts oppression in the end. The heroines thereof were three sisters: Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa Mirabal. It should be noted that their home country, the Dominican Republic, belongs to the Global South, a popular term in transnational and postcolonial studies used to refer to “developing” nation-states that share a history of colonialism or imperialism; the term also describes the “deterritorialized geography of capitalism’s externalities and means to account for subjugated peoples within the borders of wealthier countries,” and “the resistant imaginary of a transnational political subject that results from a shared experience of subjugation under contemporary global capitalism.”[1] Considering these expansive, broad meanings of a Global South, it is only right that these iconic sisters be included as we pay tribute to great southern women of the past and present. The Mirabals were revolutionary activists who stood against the regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo around the mid-1900s and became national martyrs in the process.[2] They had another sister, Dede, who was not involved with their cause due to her personal values and her controlling husband’s opposition.[3] However, even without her aid, her three siblings would manage to change Dominican history and leave an indelible mark on the culture and politics of all of Latin America.

Notably, the Mirabal sisters were all born quite close to Trujillo’s rise to power in 1930; Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa were born in 1924, 1927, and 1936, respectively.[4] They were raised in an affluent yet conservative, insular area of the Republic, but their upbringing and environment would stifle neither their strength nor their intelligence. Contrary to social norms of the time, the three would be well-educated thanks to their mother who, despite, or because of, her own illiteracy, argued on their behalf for their right to an education. She convinced her strict husband that if Patria were educated on her path to become a nun, her sisters should be afforded the same opportunity.[5]

All three sisters attended the Colegio Immaculada Concepción, a Catholic School.[6] Afterwards, their individual paths diverged for a time before they would eventually come together again as part of the resistance. Patria left the school after three years, and, rather than becoming a nun, married at the age of 17. Both Minerva and Maria Teresa completed their schooling. Furthermore, both would prioritize higher education and their careers in their lives; Minerva went on to law school and Maria Teresa would study mathematics in college.[7] Around this time, the two would also meet and marry their husbands. The three sisters’ spouses would eventually support and help them in their future resistance against Trujillo. However, before that point, Patria and Minerva would start families of their own; Patria would have a son, Nelson González Mirabal, and Minerva, a daughter, Minou Tavárez Mirabal.[8]

Despite regressive social expectations that are unfortunately associated with marriage and motherhood, clearly neither was any barrier to the sisters’ agency and interest in the affairs of their nation. Though Trujillo’s regime was essentially all they had known, it was evident to them that the sociopolitical situation in their beloved homeland was unacceptable. Trujillo’s rule, which was initially supported by the U.S. for strategic and economic reasons, would prove to be a bloody one.[9] Like any fascist, egotistical dictator, Trujillo did not tolerate dissent; he terrorized those who spoke out against him or had them killed. Thousands of Haitians in the Dominican Republic were massacred during his regime.[10] He was corrupt as well as murderous; he exploited his authority to create numerous monopolies, and he thereby become the wealthiest man in the Dominican Republic.[11] Perhaps least surprisingly of all, he also followed the ancient precedent of men in power serially harassing and assaulting women without consequence. He would send so-called “beauty scouts” to bring him young women or girls to sexually abuse.[12]

As is inevitably the case when abysmal oppression reigns over a people, the personal and political were intertwined for the Mirabal sisters and many other Dominicans. The sisters’ increasingly strong social consciences were fostered by their passion and intellect and further amplified and strengthened by their unique personal experiences. Minerva, the most vehement of the sisters, was in part inspired by her uncle’s proclivity for politics; in fact, it was because of her thirst for justice and a desire to act on her convictions that she went to law school. She detested Trujillo’s cruelty and was the first sister to strongly voice anti-Trujillo opinions.[13]

Additionally, Minerva’s circumstances are the most representative of the gendered aspect of Trujillo’s abuses of power. At age 22, she was targeted by his sexual advances when he “invited” her and the family to a party. According to one version of the story, as Trujillo danced with her, he asked, “What if I send my subjects to conquer you?” She then replied “And what if I conquer your subjects?” and coolly left the scene.[14] A different account alleges that she slapped him hard across the face and hastily made her escape from the party.[15] Regardless, though Minerva would escape Trujillo’s abuse that night, he would make her suffer in other ways.

Shortly after the incident, her father was imprisoned and brutalized by the government; he would die soon afterwards. Later on, Minerva and her mother were jailed by the regime, and she was given the ultimatum that they would be set free if she slept with Trujillo. Again, Minerva steadfastly refused, but the pair managed to escape their captors.[16] But Minerva would not be allowed to return to a normal life; she was prohibited from continuing her studies and was placed under three years of house arrest in her parents’ home. Even so, during that time, she was not idle; she wrote poetry describing her unjust circumstances as well as the tragic plight of the nation’s most impoverished citizens.[17]

In 1957, Minerva was allowed to returned to law school on the condition that she give a speech in which she exalt Trujillo and his qualities as a leader. This time, she acquiesced; the promise of completing her degree and pursuing her career was worth a moment of shame in her eyes. Minerva would receive her degree summa cum laude, but the temporary reprieve from Trujillo’s interference was only a cruel power play of his, for she was then refused a license to practice law.[18] Although she had always been politically active, Minerva’s resolve would only harden henceforth; as she put it, “It is a source of happiness to do what can be done for our country. It is sad to stay with arms crossed.”[19]

Maria Teresa was the next to join the resistance. The youngest of the sisters, she had always admired Minerva and had long shared the latter’s political views and passion, so her choice was a natural one.[20] Patria was the last to become involved. She had always known Trujillo to be a monster, but it was upon witnessing a massacre carried out by the Trujillo regime while on a religious retreat that she became compelled to channel her rage into action.[21] In addition to these personal, affecting events, an additional influence on the sisters was the Cuban Revolution, which had recently ended in 1959 and which would further shape their political sensibilities and inspire their strategies. [22]

Now all of one mind and with a fierce determination to see Trujillo and his regime destroyed, in 1960 the three sisters founded the “Movement of the 14th of June,” so named for the day of the massacre which Patria had witnessed.[23] They began to organize their efforts: the sisters enlisted approximately 300 people to help them distribute pamphlets that detailed the regime’s numerous crimes against the Dominican people, and the sisters and their allies began to manually assemble guns and bombs to prepare for an outright, violent uprising.[24] It was during this period of time that they became known as Las Mariposas, or the butterflies, to their allies in the underground resistance. Minou Mirabal would later explain: "My mother loved butterflies and, when she was asked, she would say: 'They are free.' Butterflies were for her a symbol of freedom, and this is why she chose that nickname."[25]

The sisters’ activism soon came to a head when they were arrested for plotting to assassinate Trujillo at a cattle fair; a mole had likely infiltrated their ranks and reported back to the authorities.[26] Although they were initially incarcerated, the sisters were quickly released due to the Organization of American States’ official condemnation.[27] Nonetheless, Trujillo had long desired their deaths but had been held back by his advisors for the sake of his public image. However, Trujillo’s restraint had finally snapped and he ordered Las Mariposas’ assassinations.[28] The sisters’ husbands were transported to a remote jail, and it was when they went to visit them that the Mirabals were caught, brutally beaten, and strangled to death by Trujillo’s henchmen. Their bodies were stuffed in their cars and pushed off the road to frame the murders as an accident.[29]

Accounts vary on whether or not the sisters knew this was a trap but went anyway or if they were caught off guard.[30][31] Additionally, it is not certain whether or not it was common sense that led the public to recognize that Trujillo was behind the sisters’ murders or whether Patria was responsible for telling a truck driver she managed to reach during the ambush to spread the word of what was about to happen to them.[32][33] However, what matters is that the sisters’ deaths would, exactly opposite to what Trujillo had intended, lead to the end of his regime. Their deaths served as a rallying cry for the resistance and stirred ordinary people all the more against him.[34] He would be assassinated six months later in the midst of mounting opposition by a commander whose girlfriend had joined the resistance. [35]

Despite their importance in ridding the nation of Trujillo, it took a long time for the Mirabals to be officially recognized. The succeeding president, Joaquin Balaguer, had been a close ally of Trujillo’s, and the Dominican Republic’s many problems could not be easily wiped away with the death of just one man, however much he may have been the root of its problems. However, 36 years later, the Republic began to stabilize, and Balaguer, who had served six terms as its president, was forced to resign. [36] Henceforth, the sisters were posthumously granted official recognition, though their story was already well known and beloved among the Dominican people. Exhibitions were held in their honor at the National Museum of History and Geography, and Las Mariposas’ surviving sister, Dede, would run “the Mirabal Sisters Museum in their hometown.” [37][38] The sisters were presented as national martyrs in schoolbooks and a special Mirabal stamp was issued throughout the country. The most symbolically triumphant acts were the covering of a Trujillo obelisk with murals of the Mirabal sisters, including Dede, and the renaming of their home province from Ciudad Trujillo to Hermanas Mirabal.[39][40] Lastly, and most significantly of all on a global scale, the U.N. commemorates “[t]he anniversary of their death … each year as the International Day Against Violence Against Women.”[41] Although they did not live to see it, the sisters’ legacy was profound enough to create an influence which still perpetuates the spirit of their activism even today.

The Mirabal sisters’ story is most striking in both its universality and extraordinariness. Time and again, everywhere on earth, there have been horrific rulers and systems of oppression, yet there have always been remarkable people to stand against them and fight for a better future, however doomed to fail they may have seemed. Las Mariposas, their initial circumstances, and their eventual legacy are proof that no matter how desperate the situation or high the cost of mending it may be, the fruit that is ultimately born of resistance is worth it all. While the validation of their cause after their deaths was a clear victory against fascism, it was inherently one for women as well, considering Trujillo’s sexually violent and coercive nature and Minerva’s direct experience thereof. However, like most victories, particularly ones for women and minorities, it was made possible only through teamwork, immense effort and bravery, and sacrifice. Little more can be said; for the new year, perhaps we should all endeavor to do more as well, if we are able. Surely, that would be the greatest and most beneficial tribute to Las Mariposas and women of their character.

Elize Villalobos is a freshman at the University of North Georgia. Although her major is still technically undeclared, it is increasingly likely that she will major in English. She has always loved reading and writing, and she sees both as powerful means to understanding the world and further developing empathy with other people. After she graduates, she would like to pursue a career that allows her to make as positive an impact on the world and people’s lives as she, a somewhat negative person, is able. Her hobbies include listening to music, reading, watching movies, sitting motionless while lost in thought, debating philosophy and morality with herself, and generally trying to get her life in order. Unaccustomed to taking selfies and unable to tame her hair, write succinctly, or go without a moment of self-deprecation, Elize would like to apologize for the mediocre quality of her profile picture as well as this mini biography’s length.

[1] Mahler, Anne Garland. “What/Where is the Global South?” Mahler, Anne Garland. 2017. “Global South.” Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory, ed. Eugene O’Brien. 9 January 2018.
[2] Radeska, Tijiana. “The Mirabal Sisters: The three ‘butterflies’ who were killed because of their activities against the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.” The Vintage News, 4 April 2017.
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Mirabal Sisters.” Encyclopedia.com.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Radeska.
[7] Ibid.
[8] "Mirabal Sisters."
[9] Ibid.
[10] Snook, Laura J. “How Three Butterflies Defeated a Brutal Dictator.” Telesur.com, 11 November 2017.
[11] "Mirabal Sisters."
[12] “The Mirabal Sisters: The Sisters Who Toppled a Dictatorship.” Rejected Princesses.com
[13] Radeska.
[14] Ibid.
[15] "The Mirabal Sisters."
[16] Ibid.
[17] "Mirabal Sisters."
[18] Snook.
[19] Radeska.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Encyclopedia.com
[23] Radeska.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Snook.
[26] Kubic, Mike. “Trujillo & The Mirabal Sisters.” Commonlit.org, 2016.
[27] Radeska.
[28] "Mirabal Sisters."
[29] Carmona, Priscilla. “Badass Ladies in History: The Mirabal Story.” Germ Magazine.com, 27 April 2015.
[30] Ibid.
[31] "The Mirabal Sisters."
[32] "Mirabal Sisters."
[33] "The Mirabal Sisters."
[34] Carmona.
[35] "Mirabal Sisters."
[36] Rohter, Larry. “The Three Sisters, Avenged: A Dominican Drama.” New York Times.com, 15 February 1997.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Carmona.
[39] Ibid.
[40] "The Mirabal Sisters."
[41] Rohter.

]]><![CDATA[Katie Leikam, LCSW: Transforming the Decatur LGBTQIA Community Through Affirming Therapy]]>Thu, 30 Nov 2017 13:14:11 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/katie-leikam-lcsw-transforming-the-decatur-lgbtqia-community-through-affirming-therapy

by Cameron Williams Crawford

I met Katie for the first time when she and her husband hosted us at a housewarming party at their new home. They had recently moved into our neighborhood, and my husband, a realtor, had worked as their agent. “I think you’ll like the Leikams,” he told me on the ride over, “They’re good people, and it seems like you and Katie might have some of the same interests.” Turns out, he was right. We arrived at the party, where Katie graciously welcomed us at the front door. She then ushered us into the kitchen and told us to help ourselves to the taco buffet and the wine slushies. I knew in that moment that we would be friends. Apart from discovering we shared a mutual love of most things epicurean, I also learned that night that Katie, a licensed clinical social worker, was in the process of opening her own private practice in Decatur, where she would specialize in treating LGBTQIA, gender non-conforming, and transgender clients. She has since opened her practice, and it is thriving.

Katie mostly grew up in Griffin, Georgia, but because her father worked as a salesman, her family moved around quite a bit; for a time, she also lived in Florida and North Carolina. Eventually, she found her way to back to Georgia, where she would go on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Georgia State University and a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Georgia. It was during her time in grad school that she gained her first experience in social work. In 2005, Katie worked the Meals on Wheels program as part of her internship with the Athens Community Council on Aging. That same summer, she served as a parent aid for DFACS, supervising visitation with foster children and their biological parents. Katie considers her time with DFACS as both challenging and rewarding. In one particular experience she described to me, Katie remembered going into a home where she discovered some needles and dirty diapers. “I had to tell the kid that he couldn’t see his mom that day,” she told me, “and he was really upset and tried to punch me. That was a difficult experience.” One of her favorite memories, however, is when “a mom set up a manicure for her daughter” during a supervised visit at a library: “She brought nail polish and a foot spa, all sorts of stuff, and gave her daughter a manicure, and that’s what they did for their visit. It was really cool.” After she finished her Master’s, she was a program coordinator for foster kids; she monitored foster homes, made checklists, and made sure “the homes were in order and the kids were taken care of behaviorally.”

One of the reasons why Katie chose a career in social work was because, as she said to me, “when I was in high school, I was seeing a licensed clinical social worker. I absolutely loved him, and he made a really big difference in my life.” At first, Katie said, she wanted to be an English teacher, until she decided she would much rather “help people who were having issues and concerns.”

“I’ve had a lot of jobs as a social worker and therapist,” Katie told me. One of those jobs was providing in-home Medicaid work, where she visited people in their homes and offered them therapy. In that role, “you don’t really get to pick your cases,” she said, “so I got whatever I was assigned.” It was in this job that Katie was assigned to a teenager that was bisexual, her first exposure to giving therapy to the LGBTQ population. Katie explained to me that she has always been an LGBTQ ally—“I was probably more liberal than most people growing up in Griffin,” she laughed—however, her compassion for those in the community became even more personal when a close friend of hers transitioned in 2011. “I saw the joys and struggles of my friend through her transition,” said Katie. In 2014, she started going with her friend to a local, monthly Meetup group, where she met and befriended other trans women and learned more about the trans community. Katie stressed that this—a willingness to learn—is a crucial part of being an LGBTQ ally: “I think a lot of people are like ‘Oh, I’m an ally. I’m accepting.’ But, unless you really read up about it or hear real stories, it’s like this concept that you just accept. It wasn’t until I actually started really talking to people and hearing things that go on, discrimination and questions and choices they have to make, that I realized that there was a need for a therapist.” This is also a central part of her mission as a therapist. Katie continues to learn more about the community, to “get more real world stories . . . and just learn as much as I can and try to be as educated as I can.”

Katie’s practice specializes in “affirming therapy,” providing LGBTQIA and gender non-conforming clients with a positive space to explore their identity and work towards self-acceptance. She wants her clients to know that their gender identity “is not a problem to change.” Her approach to therapy instead teaches clients that “there is always a way” to address their issues and helps them discover coping strategies that work for them. Her therapy is solution-focused, which, in the most basic sense, offers solutions to her clients. She wants her clients to walk out of their session with some sort of thought or idea—“it could be something simple, like walk outside for ten minutes a day, just some sort of solution”—to carry into the next session. Katie tailors her process to meet each client’s individual needs, to get them “on track to leading a happier, more fulfilling life by equipping [them] with the tools . . . to more efficiently and confidently manage life’s challenges.”

Katie’s practice has grown significantly since she opened in March. When I spoke with her recently, she said she had seen over twenty clients in a single week. She credits a lot of that growth to her marketing efforts on social media. “I also made relationships with some doctors in town,” she said, “and started offering therapy groups, which got my name out.” Being featured on PrideBuzz, a website that supports the local LGBT community, and VoyageATL, another online platform that supports small, local businesses and organizations, has given Katie’s practice additional publicity. Her practice has evolved in other ways, too. She has started offering sessions to kids and teenagers. Katie sees clients as young as eleven, and for those clients, offers family counseling services, if needed. Katie has even had to expand her employee base: her husband has now officially joined the team at Katie Leikam, LCSW.

Attending conferences and maintaining professional memberships are other ways that Katie continues to grow her practice. She is a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, and has been working toward WPATH certification, which requires fifty hours of education on trans health. The last time I spoke with Katie, she had just returned from a conference in Ohio, where she completed the majority of her WPATH GEI training. Katie is also a member of the Georgia Society for Clinical Social Work, LGBTQ Therapist Resource, and the Secular Therapists Network.

You can find additional information about Katie’s practice at her website, katieleikam.com. There, you can read more about Katie, the kinds of services she offers, and what insurance she accepts. You’ll also find her blog, where she covers topics related to her practice. Some examples include what a good therapist should provide you before you make an appointment, such as a free phone consultation—Katie insists that “a good therapist should take the time to spend ten minutes on the phone with you and decide if you are at least a good enough fit to make a first appointment”—and how to grieve while transgender, where she describes the stages of grief as they may relates to one’s transition. It might seem unusual, but as Katie informed me, we experience grief in situations outside of death: “If you’re going through a divorce because somebody didn’t accept your transition, or if your children are refusing to talk to you, you are grieving at that moment.” Katie wanted to include the blog on her website not only because she likes to write, but because it builds community and, ultimately, is another means by which she can help her clients. And to Katie, helping her LGBTQ and gender non-conforming clients, showing them through affirming therapy that “it is never too late to change and start living the life [they’ve] always wanted,” is a top priority.

]]><![CDATA[Henrietta Lacks: The Woman Behind the HeLa Legacy]]>Fri, 29 Sep 2017 12:23:00 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/henrietta-lacks-the-woman-behind-the-hela-legacy

by Elize Villalobos

Henrietta Lacks. Photo by OI a.urabain. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Throughout history, there has always been a strange human impulse to reduce people
solely to the tangible impact that they have left on the world. A life filled with untold hopes and dreams becomes a mere collection of facts and figures, associated only with the legacy that fortuity has seen fit to ingrain in our collective consciousness. One of the most striking cases of this in modern history is the story of Henrietta Lacks, a woman who neither consented to a procedure from which the fields of cellular biology and technology would be changed, nor lived long enough to know of her profound impact on the world. Perhaps the most insightful encapsulation of the moral essence behind Lacks’ tale is found on a single page before the prologue of the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. There, a quote by Elie Wiesel, a famous survivor of the Holocaust, reads: “We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.”[1]

Often known solely by her cell line’s name, HeLa, Lacks was a normal woman who died
from an abnormally aggressive cervical cancer. The first human immortal cell line would be cultivated from the cells of her initial tumor, a development that directly and indirectly facilitated enormous strides in medicine and science.[2] However, for far too long, Lacks herself was reduced to nothing more than a clinical subject, either treated as incidental to her cells or else entirely eclipsed by them. Yet, steps towards rectifying that injustice have been made by many devoted journalists and authors, chief among them Skloot, whose book recounts Lacks’ biography and posthumous legacy in great detail, and upon which the recent movie of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey was based. The gains made from her cells have long been acknowledged and celebrated, but it is necessary and right to remember her as the individual she was while alive, not merely as an abstract figure whose untimely demise is but an afterthought to the large-scale, long-term benefits it ultimately provided.

Due to her short life span and the length of time during which the public did not know or care about her existence, it can be difficult to accurately ascribe traits to Henrietta Lacks. However, Skloot’s detailed research provides plenty of material from which an impression of Lacks may be gleaned. From her birth on August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia as Loretta Pleasant, Lacks led a simple, yet laborious, life.[3] After her mother died in childbirth in 1924, her father sent her to live with her maternal grandfather, Tommy Lacks, in Clover, Virginia, thus separating her from her eight older siblings.[4] However, her cousin David, also known as Day, was raised alongside her, sharing a room and many responsibilities with her.[5] There on her grandfather’s farm, Lacks spent much of her childhood toiling under the sun, taking care of the farm animals, picking crops, and plowing fields.[6]

Apart from to the chores of daily life, Henrietta’s romantic and sexual activity began at quite a young age with Day. Those who had picked up on the particular nature of their closeness were unsurprised when Day and Henrietta had a child, Lawrence, despite her being a mere fourteen years old and Day being five years her senior.[7] Four years later they had another child, Elsie, who was born with epilepsy, neuro-syphilis, deafness, and muteness.[8] Facing little outside pressure to rush into marriage, Lacks and Day eventually wed in April of 1941.[9] Afterwards, motivated by a desire for a better life, the family would move to Turner Station in Maryland, an industrial town mostly consisting of migrant black workers.[10] However, Lacks preferred the fresh air of Clover, and she would always take her children back there on the weekends.[11] She and Day would go on to have three more kids, Sonny, Deborah, and Joe, and together with her family, Lack lived a mostly uneventful, if very occupied, life for some time.[12]

However, four months after giving birth to Joe, Lacks went to Johns Hopkins Hospital, informing the receptionist “that she had a knot on her womb.”[13] As a matter of fact, she had felt a strange sensation that something was wrong with her for around a year, but, loath to enter a hospital setting if at all avoidable, it was only when she started bleeding outside of her menstrual cycle that she decided to consult a doctor.[14] Thus, Lacks went to the “colored ward” of Johns Hopkins, where Dr. Howard Jones diagnosed her with cervical cancer.[15] Not wanting anyone to worry about her, she kept her diagnosis secret from everyone except Day for a month and a half. Her convincing façade was aided by the fact that she did not yet have any symptoms and by the infrequency of the radium treatments that were the standard back then.[16] The initial procedure consisted of inserting tubes filled with radium into the cervix and sewing them into place; during the operation, the doctor, Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr., removed a piece of the tumor to send to George Gey, the man who would first cultivate and distribute HeLa to others.[17]

Lacks’ secrecy was disrupted when a change to X-Ray treatments necessitated more frequent trips to Johns Hopkins. She decided to entrust news of her diagnosis to her cousins and friends Sadie and Margaret, and the two would let Lacks stay at Margaret’s house after her treatments while she waited for Day to take her home. Life went on in this manner for a while, and at one point, it seemed as if the cancer had almost completely regressed; the doctors were nearly certain that she would make a full recovery.[18] However, a major marring of this temporarily positive outlook was that, in another grave violation of her bodily autonomy, the doctors had failed to inform Henrietta that the treatments would leave her infertile.[19] She insisted that she would not have agreed to them had she known of the consequences.[20]

That concern was soon supplanted by the aggressive recurrence of her cancer. Despite reporting an increase in her discomfort, the doctors found “No evidence of recurrence,” until some weeks later when they found a large mass attached to her pelvic wall. By then, Lacks’ condition had worsened to the point that she had difficulty walking and urinating, and it would only deteriorate further from there.[21] Lacks’ cancer was terrible to an almost unprecedented degree. It spread to essentially every surface inside her body and severely inhibited most of her vital, basic bodily functions.[22] It must not be forgotten that, for all the good that would eventually come of those cancer cells, they caused profound suffering in a fellow human being, a reality that should never be dismissed with casual indifference no matter when, where, or it how it occurs. As her cousin Emmett would later recount, “Henrietta rose up out that bed like she been possessed by the devil of pain itself … That there’s a memory I’ll take to my grave … She was sick like I’ve never seen.”[23] While in this poor state, Lacks suddenly sensed the imminence of her death and told her sister, Gladys: “Make sure Day takes care of them children … Especially my baby girl Deborah.”[24] Less than a month afterwards, Lacks died on October 4, 1951.[25]

Apart from the chronological timeline and facts of her tragically short life, it is the testimony of her friends regarding her personality and people’s perceptions of her that help complete an impression of the person that Lacks actually was. According to Sadie, Lacks, or “Hennie,” as Sadie called her, “made life come alive – bein with her was like bein with fun … Hennie just love peoples. She was a person that could really make the good things come out of you.”[26] In terms of her appearance and self-expression, Lacks was a beautiful young woman, and she carefully maintained a vibrant, feminine look. She mostly wore skirts and pumps that showed her toes, the nails of which she loved to carefully paint a dark red.[27]

It is little surprise that Lacks inspired devotion among men. During her days on her grandfather’s farm, her cousin Crazy Joe Grinnan was so taken with her that he stabbed himself upon learning of her and Day’s engagement.[28] In Turner Station, another of her cousins, Galen, was, according to Sadie, more attracted to Lacks than he was to his wife, Ethel.[29] In turn, Ethel absolutely despised Henrietta; Sadie reasonably assumed that her jealousy was the root of her animus.[30] Lacks and Sadie paid her no mind, though; they would laugh and enjoy each other’s company, playing bingo for pennies as Lacks’ children stayed close to their mother and toyed with the chips.[31] On nights that Day stayed home, he and Lacks would play cards and listen to the blues.[32] However, ever rambunctious seekers of a good time, Lacks and Sadie would creep out of the house to go dancing when Day worked the night shift, lightheartedly making their escape from the dance club if Ethel happened to appear.[33] Lacks simply enjoyed life with the vivacity of the young, free-spirited woman she was.

Coexisting alongside her sense of mischief and playfulness, Lacks was endowed with a maternal affinity for children; they would always behave for her whenever she was present. However, her un-abiding love for her own children did not always manifest itself through leniency. When Lawrence would play around a dangerous pier against her wishes, she wouldn’t hesitate to use fierce corporal punishment. As Sadie recalls, “Hennie went down there with a switch. She pitched a boogie like I never seen.”[34] However, apart from Lawrence’s disobedience, Lacks almost never got angry.

If motherly concern was the primary cause of emotional turmoil in her life, it is unsurprising that Lacks’ greatest heartbreak was having to send Elsie away to Crownsville State Hospital, then called Hospital for the Negro Insane, when she became pregnant with Joe.[35] Henrietta simply did not have the time or means to take care of Elsie and her special needs as other unavoidable responsibilities began to pile up.[36] However, by all accounts, “a bit of Henrietta died the day they sent Elsie away … losing her was worse than anything else that happened to her.”[37] Still, Lacks made an effort to remain in her daughter’s life, and she would make the trip to Crownsville to visit and comfort Elsie once a week.[38]

Despite being a real person imbued with great depth of character, Henrietta Lacks’ legacy would long be obscured and overshadowed by HeLa. Although exceedingly well-covered by scientific journals, the cell line’s significance still deserves to be mentioned. Because HeLa’s cells could survive indefinitely in a cell culture, they were able to be widely disseminated to scientists around the globe which facilitated and promoted an incredible range of experimentation that had previously not been possible.[39] As Skloot succinctly explains, “The reason Henrietta’s cells were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human.”[40]

Scientific knowledge and medical applications thereof benefited immensely from this cellular proliferation. Among the most important contributions and advancements that were made with HeLa cells were the discovery of how to clone and freeze cells, the discovery of chromosomes, and the overall standardization of the field of cellular biology.[41] In medicine, HeLa cells were instrumental in developing a polio vaccine, and, in a poetic turn, an HPV vaccine in the 1980s.[42] Unsurprisingly, an immense business revolving around the sale of HeLa boomed; there was intense demand, and with a supply that could be indefinitely replenished, there was a great deal of money to be gained.[43]

Yet, in terms of its ethical underpinnings, Lacks’ legacy is much more complex and ambiguous than HeLa’s almost entirely beneficial impact on science and medicine. Any total condemnation or absolution of the outside parties who stitched together the HeLa legacy can be met with a counterpoint that muddles the boundary between right and wrong. As Deborah said herself at one point, “There’s two sides to the story and that’s what we want to bring out. Nothing about my mother is truth if it’s about wantin to fry the researchers.”[44] As difficult may be to accept, Deborah was right. After all, the strange conundrum at the heart of HeLa’s story is that nothing illegal was done. Lacks was not technically deprived of her rights since doctors were not legally bound to request her permission to obtain a tissue sample, and at the time it was common practice to obtain cells without asking for consent.[45] Furthermore, because Lack’s biological tissue was not illegally obtained, and because there are still no actual laws requiring doctors to inform patients of any potential commercial benefit that their tissues may hold, any profits made from HeLa are essentially unobtainable to the Lacks family on a legal basis.[46]

Regardless of the legal technicalities, there is an undeniable sense of wrongness that
pervades the narrative of HeLa, and it is impossible to not acknowledge the intersectional racial and gendered implications of the story; many perceive the events as yet another instance of “a black woman whose body … was exploited by white scientists.”[47]While an entirely fair interpretation, it must also be acknowledged that the outcome would not necessarily have been altered had Lacks been white, as this particular controversy arguably revolves mostly around lack of informed consent and around the scientific ethics through which researchers and doctors approached most, if not all, patients and subjects.

Conversely, one cannot divorce the specifics of a case from the world and cultural mores in which it takes place and which inherently inform it. Most doctors, scientists, and academics of that time were white men, and their professional principles allowed them to utilize and benefit from marginalized and disenfranchised communities, thus making people of color and/or women especially vulnerable to their malpractices. The historical record has ample evidence of this, and the racially tinged and motivated wrongs done to black people in the name of science simply cannot be blotted out. The dehumanization and reduction of black people to experimental specimens has happened often enough that it would be naïve, or willfully ignorant, to not recognize as yet another manifestation of institutionalized racism.

To support this argument, one need only look at figures such as J. Marion Sims, dubbedthe “Father of Modern Gynecology,” who used slave women and children to test out different types of surgery, such as a corrective procedure for fistula.[48] In his process of medical experimentation, he subjected the individual slaves to horrific, invasive brutality.[49] Fast forwarding to the 1900s, black people continued to be systematically abused in science. Around the same time that HeLa cells were being used to help develop a polio vaccine, the notorious Tuskegee syphilis studies were taking place; during the studies, researchers “watched African-American men with syphilis … die slow, painful, preventable deaths, even after they realized penicillin could cure them.”[50] Additionally, there were many instances in which doctors performed involuntary, medically unnecessary hysterectomies on black women in order to “stop them from reproducing, and to give young doctors a chance to practice the procedure.”[51]

More relevant to the Lacks family was Johns Hopkins’ history of extremely questionable activities. Despite offering free medical treatment for people of all colors, the hospital had also performed studies on black people without informing them, such as taking blood from children to search for “genetic predispositions to criminal behavior.”[52] Perhaps the overall attitude at that time of the scientific community towards black patients and people is best exemplified through a quote by the doctor who diagnosed Lacks: “Hopkins, with its large indigent black population, had no dearth of clinical material.”[53] With all of this in mind, it is exceedingly evident that the larger racial context is inextricable from HeLa’s story and vice versa. However, whatever one may take away from the HeLa controversy in terms of ethics and race, the personal pain of the Lacks family is indisputable. Indeed, one of the more obvious narrative threads in Skloot’s account is the deep emotional distress that Lacks’ family underwent. In her absence, her children suffered severe abuse at the hands of Ethel. Additionally, when they eventually learned of the HeLa cell line twenty-four years after their mother’s death, they struggled greatly with its financial and philosophical implications, only getting something approaching closure with the writing and release of Skoot’s book.[54]

Many people will draw different conclusions from Henrietta Lacks’ story. However, regardless of one’s particular opinions, it would be impossible for anyone with an open heart and mind to not come away from Skloot’s book thinking of the HeLa story in an entirely new light. One should recognize Henrietta Lacks as immeasurably more than just a biological subject from which immortal cells, seemingly entities unto themselves, were drawn. Although some cynics may say that finding the human reality behind historical and scientific figures and events is meaningless, the personal feelings, encounters, and connections that are made are all that life really is as we ourselves live through it. Understanding the people behind any given story is necessary for our self-improvement as individuals and as a society. If we all contain universes within ourselves as Wiesel said, the knowledge and lessons contained therein are surely enough make the world outside just a little bit better. That may certainly be said of Henrietta Lacks and her remarkable story.

[1] Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Gale Group, 2010.
[2] Ibid., 4.
[3] Ibid., 18.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 19, 23.
[6] Ibid., 19.
[7] Ibid., 23.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 24.
[10] Ibid., 26.
[11] Ibid., 42.
[12] Ibid., 331.
[13] Ibid., 13.
[14] Ibid., 14.
[15] Ibid., 31.
[16] Ibid., 32, 45.
[17] Ibid., 41.
[18] Ibid., 46.
[19] Ibid., 47.
[20] Ibid., 47, 48.
[21] Ibid., 64.
[22] Ibid., 65, 83.
[23] Ibid., 85.
[24] Ibid., 85, 86.
[25] Ibid., 86.
[26] Ibid., 43.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid., 24.
[29] Ibid., 43.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid., 44.
[32] Ibid., 42.
[33] Ibid., 44.
[34] Ibid., 45.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid., 47.
[37] Ibid., 45.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid., 57, 58.
[40] Ibid., 58.
[41] Ibid., 98, 99, 100.
[42] Ibid., 212, 213.
[43] Ibid., 101.
[44] Ibid., 250.
[45] Ibid., 29, 328.
[46] Ibid., 326, 327.
[47] Ibid., 168.
[48] Holland, Brynn. “The ‘Father of Modern Gynecology’ Performed Shocking Experiments on Slaves.” History. 29 Aug. 2017. Web. 31 August 2017.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Skloot, 50, 97.
[51] Ibid., 50.
[52] Ibid., 167.
[53] Ibid., 30.
[54] Ibid., 191.

]]><![CDATA[Rose-Colored Girl: Hayley Williams]]>Fri, 11 Aug 2017 13:46:43 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/rose-colored-girl-hayley-williams

by Lindsey Castille

Hayley Williams, lead vocalist of the American rock band Paramore, at Rock im Park 2013 in Nuremberg, Germany. Photo by Sven-Sebastian Sajak. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

While listening to Paramore’s After Laugher, the band’s fifth studio album, I can’t help but feel nostalgic. I first discovered Paramore and their lead singer almost exactly ten years ago, when I was just thirteen. Paramore’s music and Hayley Williams’ powerful voice quite literally changed my life. I have seen Paramore live more times than I can count on one hand. Hell, I dyed my hair cherry red for four years because of her. Hayley Williams is a role model not only to me, but to thousands, maybe millions, of other girls and women. Her image as a fiery and fearless individual remains iconic.

What started in Franklin, Tennessee as a teenage afterschool funk cover group successfully emerged as a mainstream pop rock band. Paramore has toured with musical heavyweights including No Doubt, Green Day, Tegan and Sara, Reliant K, New Found Glory, and Fall Out Boy, and has had six major headlining tours.[1] Paramore has also been nominated for multiple major awards, including an American Music Award, Billboard Music Award, MTV Video Music Award, People’s Choice Award, Teen Choice Award, and four Grammy Awards. In 2014, they won “Best Rock Song” at the Grammy Awards for “Ain’t it Fun,” a single from their self-titled album.[2] Paramore has sold millions of records and is considered a huge commercial success.

Williams is surprisingly a very private person and likes for her personal life to remain as such. In her professional life, Williams has collaborated with several bands and solo artists including New Found Glory, B.o.B., Zedd, Chvrches, and Taylor Swift. She has also been featured on several movie soundtracks, including Twilight, Transformers: Dark Side of The Moon, and Jennifer’s Body.[3] Apart from her music, Williams is a successful entrepreneur, businesswoman, and philanthropist. She is passionate about beauty, creating and collaborating on both makeup and hair product lines. In 2013, she collaborated with MAC Cosmetics to create a small makeup line in her name.[4] In 2015, she introduced “Kiss-Off,” an online series on Popular TV showcasing beauty and music.[5] In 2016, she released her eagerly anticipated hair dye brand, Good Dye Young.[6] Williams has also participated in campaigns to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research.[7]

Unfortunately, typical of all leading women, Williams has experienced misogyny from the press and even fellow band members. In 2010 Williams was the victim of cybersexism, taken in the form of a topless photo leak. Williams mistakenly posted an intimate photo of herself to Twitter. By the time she realized her mistake and removed the photo, it had already been saved and reposted countless times. Regardless of the circumstances of the photo leak, Williams did not purposefully post the photo; therefore, she did not consent to it being shared repeatedly on the internet for personal gain and click bait.[8]

In 2011, it was announced via Paramore’s website that The Farro brothers, founding members of Paramore, were leaving the band. Paramore’s official statement was then countered by a lengthy statement on the Farro brothers’ Blogspot, claiming Paramore to be simply "a manufactured product of a major label.[9] They further stated that Williams was a victim of controlling and manipulative behavior by her parents and management and said that she treated Paramore as her solo project because Williams was the only member of the band also signed to Atlantic Records. Fans and critics alike began to judge Hayley, calling Paramore “The Hayley Williams Show.”

As a fan of Paramore I was crushed by the news that my favorite band may be breaking up, and further hurt by the statement released by the Farro brothers about Hayley, who was, and still is, someone I admire. In a statement I posted on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr about the situation, I stated that Hayley is, after all

the front-woman of the band, and it is normal for a lead singer to receive a lot of attention, plenty of times the attention focused on them is more than that of the rest of the band receives… It is hurtful and unfair to continue calling her a diva and claiming it to be "The Hayley Williams Show." Brendon Urie of the band Panic! At The Disco, who I am sure almost all listeners of Paramore know of as they are in the same genre and are signed to the same label, is the only member of Panic! left, and he hardly got this many negative comments when announcing their gradual decline in members. It would have been completely fair and true to call Panic! the Brendon Urie show because now it literally is.[10]

Complications resurfaced once again when Jeremy Davis announced he was leaving the band in 2015.[11] Regardless of the problems of their past, Zac Farro has returned to Paramore to play drums on their most recent studio album.[12]

Although Williams now identifies as a “proud feminist,” she has been accused of writing and performing sexist lyrics. Arguably Paramore’s most popular song, “Misery Business,” features the lyric: “once a whore / you’re nothing more / sorry, that’ll never change.” In a personal blog post released in 2015, Williams stated that those lyrics were representative of the internalized misogyny of a 17-year-old girl:

Misery Business is not a set of lyrics that I relate to as a 26-year-old woman. I haven’t related to it in a very long time. Those words were written when I was 17… admittedly, from a very narrow-minded perspective … But I’m not ashamed. One thing I’m more thankful for than just about anything is all that my experiences - including my mistakes - have shaped me and made me someone I’m happier to be … In conclusion. I’m a 26 years old person. and yes, a proud feminist. Just maybe not a perfect one?[13]

Paramore’s new album, After Laugher, poignantly addresses mental health. With songs like “Hard Times” and “Fake Happy,” you can feel the sadness and nerves bubbling just below the surface. In an interview with The FADER, Williams publicly addressed her own mental health issues: “For the first time in my life, there wasn’t a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel. I thought, I just wish everything would stop. It wasn’t in the sense of, I’m going to take my life. It was just hopelessness. Like, What’s the point? I don’t think I understood how dangerous hopelessness is. Everything hurts.”[14]

Williams began seeing a therapist to treat her depression and anxiety. Along with seeking professional help, music is also therapeutic for her. When speaking to The FADER about After Laughter, Williams admits, “There’s nothing that I really want to say about the album that I didn’t get to say … That’s why I’m really thankful for music. Because I get to express parts of myself I don’t really know how to express.”[15] I know that I, as a fan, mirror those sentiments, especially about Paramore’s music. Williams may be thankful for music itself, but I am thankful for theirs. I am a dedicated fan of Paramore and Williams, and I will be for life.

Lindsey Castille is currently a sociology major attending the University of North Georgia in Gainesville. She is the creator and president of UNG Gainesville’s Gender Equality Club. In her first year of the club she ran several events, including a now annual drive called Lady & the Tamp, which collects women’s and children’s products for a women’s shelter. She considers herself an intersectional feminist and enjoys studying about social problems, body positivity, sex positivity, gender, and many other things considered feminist issues. In her free time she enjoys reading the classics, and her recent literary hang-up is bio-comedies. She is also interested in organic gardening, eating sushi, and petting other people’s dogs and cats. She is a vegetarian, concert enthusiast, and rabid fan of the Harry Potter series. Her future college plans include either staying on the UNG campus and pursuing a social work degree with a minor in gender studies, or attending the University of Georgia to pursue a degree in gender studies. She wants to continue in a career that helps women, however that may be.

[1] "Paramore." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 20 July 2017. Web. 28 July 2017.
[2] "List of awards and nominations received by Paramore." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 20 July 2017. Web. 28 July 2017.
[3] "Hayley Williams." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 27 July 2017. Web. 28 July 2017.
[4] Barringer, Taylor. "M.A.C.'s New Flaming Hot Hayley Williams Collection." ELLE. Hearst Digital Media, 14 June 2017. Web. 28 July 2017.
[5] "Hayley Williams To Host a New Online TV Show." Alter The Press! Alter The Press!, 2015. Web. 28 July 2017.
[6] Ryken, Atreyue. "Hayley Williams launches hair dye company." Alternative Press. Alternative Press, 04 Mar. 2016. Web. 28 July 2017.
[7] Twomey, Rebecca. "Hayley Williams launches Hard Rock Café's PINKTOBER campaign." Cosmopolitan. Hearst Magazines UK, 12 Oct. 2013. Web. 28 July 2017.
[8] Hilton, Perez. "Hacker Posts Topless Photos Of Hayley Williams On Her Twitter Account!" PerezHilton.com. PerezHilton.com, 28 May 2010. Web. 28 July 2017.
[9] Montgomery, James. "Paramore Split Gets Nasty: Josh Farro Calls Former Band 'A Manufactured Product'." MTV News. MTV, 22 Dec. 2010. Web. 28 July 2017.
[10] Castille, Lindsey. ‘As a long time fan of Paramore, it was upsetting to hear the news several days ago that Jeremy Davis is leaving the band.’ 18 Jan. 2015. Facebook post. 28 July 2017.
[11] Payne, Chris. "Original Paramore Bassist Jeremy Davis Leaves Band." Billboard. Billboard, 15 Dec. 2015. Web. 28 July 2017.
[12] Payne, Chris. "Rejoice, Paramore Fans: Drummer Zac Farro Is Back in the Band." Billboard. Billboard, 02 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 July 2017.
[13] Carter, Emily. "Hayley Williams: ‘Misery Business Is Not A Set Of Lyrics That I Relate To’." Kerrang! Wasted Talent Ltd., 02 June 2015. Web. 28 July 2017.
[14] Frank, Alex. "Adult Emotions." The FADER. The FADER, 29 June 2017. Web. 28 July 2017.
[15] Ibid.

]]><![CDATA[The Life and Advocacy of Phyllis Frye]]>Wed, 31 May 2017 11:59:31 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/the-life-and-advocacy-of-phyllis-frye

by Elize Villalobos

Phyllis Frye. Photo retrieved from Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia for the World, reprinted under a Creative Commons license.

Every so often, sociopolitical situations come along that remind us that we must never take our civil rights for granted. For many people in the U.S., particularly people of color, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ folk, and anyone who falls within an intersection of those three umbrella groups, the months between the presidential election and today have served as a sobering reminder of the societal prejudices and institutional discrimination that still deny them the benefits of full equality in American society. Indeed, trans people, specifically, have continued to face setbacks this year. The news that Trump’s administration rolled back the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom policies, which allowed trans students to use whichever restroom matched their gender identity, was undoubtedly a blow to LGBT rights.[1] However, even more sickening than this particular revival of institutionalized transphobia is the violence that the trans community continues to face: so far, ten transgender people have been murdered in 2017, most of whom were targeted simply because they were transgender.[2] In light of these recent issues, as well as the other ongoing struggles of the transgender community, it is perhaps a natural reflex to want to take a moment to recognize a past leader of the trans rights movement so that we may be heartened and regain some hope and energy for the future.

Therefore, on that topic, it is a great pleasure to highlight Phyllis Frye, a transgender woman who has been one of the most instrumental figures in fighting for and furthering trans rights during the last several decades. I admit that I had not heard of Frye until she was recommended as a subject for this profile. However, upon researching her, I was completely awed by her story and courageous advocacy. A fitting dénouement to her storied career as an activist, in 2010, the mayor of Houston, Texas, Annise Parker, appointed Frye as a municipal court judge with unanimous consent from the city council.[3] Although Frye is one of the first openly transgender judges to serve in the States, she says that she is aware of at least two other trans judges in other parts of the country, such as Vicki Kolakowski, who became a judge in California 15 days before Frye became one in Texas.[4] Regardless, Frye’s accomplishment, as well as Kolakowski’s, is a milestone for the transgender community. As has been intimated in media coverage of Frye’s appointment, there is something approaching poetic justice in the fact that a woman who was once explicitly targeted by Houston law for simply existing as herself is now an authority thereof.[5] Along with her judgeship, Frye manages the law firm Frye and Associates, which “provide[s] a variety of legal services for the LGBT and Straight-Allies community;” Frye herself now solely represents transgender people to help them navigate the unique legal difficulties that come with being trans.[6][7]

However, as reassuring as it is to know of her present-day success, Frye’s story deserves to be told in its entirety. Born in the 1940s as Philip Frye, Frye initially appeared as a stereotypical, red-blooded American boy.[8] In hindsight, Frye seems rather amused by the lengths she went to in order to assert Philip’s masculinity. According to Frye, Philip “was a man’s man, and [he] had a terrible potty mouth.”[9] Although she couldn’t really put into words, and therefore could not truly understand, that she was trans at the time, Frye likens her experience as a boy to that of an actor giving the performance of a lifetime, joking that: “I was so good at being a guy that I should have won an Oscar.”[10] For, despite Philip’s macho bravado, on the inside, he instinctively gravitated towards femininity and female modes of expression that were then strictly forbidden to him. While he engaged in male-coded behaviors and fulfilled boyish roles, he secretly wanted to act as a girl would; as Frye explains: “I was an extremely good Boy Scout — but I would have rather been in the Girl Scouts. I was the R.O.T.C. commander of my high school — but I would have rather been the head cheerleader. And I cross-dressed whenever I could, in private.”[11] Of course, as with most trans people, the daily, continual performance of the incorrect gender was unhealthy and stifling to Philip. Yet, he had little choice in the matter. When his parents found his feminine clothing, he played along with their leading suggestion that he was going through a mere “phase.” Frye asserts that had her family had any idea that Philip’s cross-dressing was “the real thing, [Philip] would have been out of the house, and [he] would have been homeless.”[12] Living within that sort of cultural and domestic environment, it is little surprise that even as Philip grew older, he remained unaware of the existence of transgender issues. As far as he knew, he was entirely alone.[13]

Thus, living under this façade, with no way to reconcile his, or in fact her, identity with outside pressures, Philip eventually married, and he and his wife had a son during his junior year of college.[14] During that time, he was once again caught cross-dressing, this time by his spouse.[15] He had no recourse and was compelled to try to communicate his innate feelings about his gender.[16] Their union lasted for a while yet, and after graduating, he joined the Army and moved to West Germany with his family.[17] However, the strains that his ever emerging femininity placed on his spousal relationship caused the marriage to deteriorate, and he admitted to his superiors the reason behind the discord.[18] He was then sent back to the U.S. in the hopes that he would be “cured” of his so-called “condition.”[19] A common indignity and offense against queer and trans people, the conversion therapy that Frye was pressured to undergo was horrific; one technique involved the inducement of vomiting when wearing women’s clothing.[20] Studies have shown that there is no evidence that conversion therapy works (not that it should be done anyway, were it effective); as a matter of fact, it is often psychologically harmful to LGBTQ youth.[21] Unsurprisingly, then, Frye’s “treatment” was unsuccessful, and his wife consequently divorced him.[22] The Army then gave Frye the option between resigning or being expelled; he chose the former and was given an honorable discharge because he had been open about his “transvestism.”[23]

Soon thereafter, in 1972, Frye attempted suicide, a phenomenon that is, unfortunately, still all too common for LGBT youth today; those who do not have support groups are approximately eight times as likely to attempt suicide as those who do.[24][25] However, Frye dislikes dwelling on this lowest point of her life, quite stoically referring to it as “the ultimate in self-pity.”[26] Instead, she prefers to focus on the inspirational journey, or “war stories,” as she calls her remarkable experiences, that followed that terrible incident.[27] As Philip worked to recover his health, he became a born-again Christian, but even more important than his newfound faith was the beginning of his relationship with his second wife, Trish, to whom Frye has been married for more than 40 years.[28] During an interview for the Texas Standard, she acknowledged that Trish “is a very private person, and I intentionally don’t talk about her much except to say that she is the love of my life, and she’s my best friend … and we have forged a life together.”[29] Of course, Trish’s tolerance of her then-husband’s ostensible cross-dressing is an undeniably significant, moving expression of love and acceptance, the meaningfulness of which Frye has addressed. As she tells it, Trish simply stated: “‘You need to be yourself. Let’s try you being you, and I will see if I can hang on.’ … I knew it would either send us flying apart, or bring us closer together. Soon after that, I started my transition.”[30] Thus, in 1976, and finally with the support of someone she loved, Philip began to always wear feminine clothing, and she changed her name to Phyllis.[31]

However, Frye’s transition came at a cost. After informing her neighbors that she was becoming a woman, her home was vandalized on different occasions. The house was egged and marked with graffiti, her car’s tires were slashed, and someone even left a burning, soiled diaper on the porch.[32] She and Trish were also hounded by “horrible, obscene” phone calls, and Frye had difficulty in finding and keeping jobs.[33][34] Yet, perhaps the most crushing consequence she faced was her parents’ and family’s rejection of her. Just as she had intuited when she was the teenaged, cross-dressing Philip, her parents completely cut her out of their lives when she told them who she truly was.[35] Reconciliation with her relatives was one of the few things which Frye could not accomplish, though certainly through no fault of her own; in a 2016 interview, Frye revealed: “My mother and father went to their graves hating me, and my brother and sister are estranged to this day.”[36]

Even so, despite all of these hardships, Frye had, to use a colloquialism, just started to truly find herself. Although some might have considered relocating to a neighborhood in which he or she would be unknown, Frye’s reasoning for coming out to her neighbors and for firmly staying put within her mostly hostile neighborhood of Westbury was rooted in both pragmatism and principle. Firstly, she and Trish had a mortgage on their house, so moving elsewhere was not financially feasible.[37] However, Frye maintains that attempting to completely escape others’ negative attention is an ultimately futile endeavor for a trans person, pointing out that no matter where one goes, “you definitely have the people who are going to be ugly to you once you’re found out.”[38] Furthermore, there were “a few people that were nice” to Frye and Trish in their neighborhood as well as “a few people sitting on the fence, just kind of watching and [who] haven’t decided which way to go.”[39] To Frye, it was preferable to be familiar with the people in her community, good, neutral, or bad, instead of moving to a place which potentially could have had even less support or tolerance than was in Westbury.[40] In any case, thanks to Trish and the pure rightness of her new, authentic lifestyle, Frye had acquired newfound motivation to not only continue living as the person she truly was and is, but to also speak out on behalf of other people like her, who were by then sometimes referred to as “transgenderist.”[41] She explained the powerful effect of fully embracing her identity in a 1976 speech, saying: “I put on my skirts five weeks ago and have not taken them off … During the past five weeks, I have felt normal for the first time in 28 years.”[42]

Of course, once Frye was able to realize her gender identity, the personal inevitably began to merge with the political. Social intolerance invariably politicizes and marginalizes non-normative identities and minorities while reducing their demands for equality and dignity to petty “identity politics.” In the 1970s, one of the most tangibly threatening policies pertaining to Frye’s identity was an ordinance that criminalized cross-dressing, and she immediately fought against it upon her transition. Fortunately, the ordinance was repealed in 1980; by then, she had begun to study law for the express purpose of defending herself legally from transphobia and discrimination.[43] By the time she finished law school, she had begun to physically transition as well.[44] Now armed with legal expertise, Frye recalls that the neighborhood harassment came to an end because, “As a lawyer, they were frightened of me.”[45] On the other hand, employers were still unwilling to hire her; nonetheless Frye was able to make a living representing impoverished clients for whom judges appointed counsel.[46] She continued to exercise her voice and became politically involved with the Democratic party, League of Women voters, and the local gay and lesbian caucus.[47]

However, it was the advent of the Internet in the 90s that most significantly fostered a more cohesive trans community; it allowed transgender people to connect and share their stories, but, crucially, it also facilitated communication between leaders who would otherwise have been isolated from each other.[48] In 1992, Frye summoned leaders to a Houstonian hotel for the first International Conference on Trans Law and Employment Policy.[49] Subsequent conferences allowed leaders of the movement to contemplate upon and explain legalities that were specifically related to trans issues.[50] However, one of their most forward-thinking, if less tangibly applicable, achievements was to create an International Bill of Gender Rights that explicitly stated that “All human beings have the right to define their own gender identity regardless of chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex or initial gender role.”[51] Through these conferences, Frye’s role as an organizer and impact as a motivational speaker within the transgender rights movement was on full display, and her inspirational speeches urged strength and personal activism in the face of adversity and prejudice: “You have no reason for staying scared. You have no reason for staying closeted. You have no reason for not being the true person that you are. This is our decade. Make it happen for you now.”[52]

Some people may be surprised to know that the trans rights movement was not initially accepted as part of the broader LGBT rights movement; transgender people were essentially viewed as political liabilities, or “a politically embarrassing subgroup,” by many cisgender gay and lesbian leaders.[53] For instance, the Human Rights Campaign accepted the exclusion of trans people when Congress drafted the federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act (which, as it turns out, did not and has not ever been passed into law).[54] Therefore, Frye’s advocacy involved not only challenging heteronormative, cissexist discrimination and prejudice, but also fighting to cement the tenuous status of transgender people, or the “T,” within the LGBT community itself.[55] She intelligently and passionately argued that homophobia and transphobia stemmed from the same essential ignorance, fear, and hatred of the “other” that existed within the context of prevailing cultural attitudes towards gender and sexuality.[56] Additionally, she made the point that many trans folk, such as Frye herself, are queer or gay in their sexual orientations.[57] It seemed clear to her, then, that trans and gay rights were intrinsically complementary causes.[58]

True to her activist philosophy, she made her point in bold fashion at the second Gay and Lesbian March on Washington that took place in 1987.[59] Neither the first or second march recognized trans people as allies or advocated for them, but Frye, leading a group of her transgender peers, blocked the procession’s path as a form of protest.[60] Such a stand evidently made a difference; the third march officially included the trans community.[61] However, there was still a decided lack of trans representation in queer advocacy groups, and so, to try to rectify the situation, Frye and other leaders of the movement started a transgender lobbying group in Washington, D.C.[62] In the mid-90s, the trans caucus joined forces with the bisexual caucus to, as Frye puts it, “carry each other’s water.”[63] Truly, the amount of work done and meetings held cannot be fully put down for the purpose of this profile; let it be known, though, that Frye tirelessly committed herself to the slow, hard work that is necessary to effecting lasting change. However, by the early 2000s, Frye understandably began to want to live her life in relative peace and quiet.[64] Therefore, once fellow activist Mara Keisling founded the National Center for Transgender Equality in 2003, Frye was able to rest easy knowing that “‘there was a … passing of the baton.”[65]

Overall, there cannot be said to be a single, definitive achievement of or conclusion to Phyllis Frye’s legacy. Instead, she had many impressive accomplishments that encompassed all aspects of furthering trans rights; it is quite touching to consider her journey from fighting to legalize her existence and gender expression as a trans woman, to her holding an important, respected civic position as a judge. However, the more things change, the more they stay the same. It must be acknowledged that transphobia is still quite alive today, and it manifests itself in both blatant and insidious ways. As a matter of fact, while doing research for this profile, there was a perturbingly crass, transphobic headline that was the seventh result on Google for “Phyllis Frye judge.” However, if Frye is proof of anything, it is that one must not stop believing in the possibility a brighter tomorrow, nor stop striving to make that possibility a reality. Her success helped lay a framework within which other trans people may survive and thrive; Frye has said that she hopes that other trans people will become judges, and history may be made this year with Henry Sias, who could become the first openly trans man to serve as a judge.[66][67] So, while our current political landscape may seem quite grim, I hope that at least some of you will be able to gain inspiration from her remarkable story and the positive change that she helped effect. All of us must continue to support and affirm equality and acceptance for all people; in doing so, we honor the sacrifices and hard work of people of those who came before and have entrusted us with precious rights to defend and champion.

[1] CBS/AP. “Transgender bathrooms: Trump’s administration reverses Obama policies.” CBS. 22 Feb. 2017. Web. 26 May 2017.
[2] Human Rights Campaign. “Violence Against the Transgender Community in 2017.” Human Rights Campaign. Web. 26 May 2017.
[3] Wright, John. “Phyllis Frye becomes Texas’ 1st trans judge.” Dallas Voice. 17 Nov. 2010. Web. 26 May 2017.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Sontag, Deborah. “Once a Pariah, Now a Judge: The Early Transgender Journey of Phyllis Frye.” New York Times. 29 Aug. 2016. Web. 26 May 2017.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Hogstrom, Kim. “Swinging for the Fences: Houston’s Phyllis Frye Paved the Way for the Modern Transgender Movement.” OutSmart. 1 Jun. 2016. Web. 26 May 2017.
[10] Sontag.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Fanning, Rhonda. “The Nation’s First Transgender Judge Hails from Texas.” Texas Standard. 2 Sept. 2015. Web. 26 May 2017.
[13] Sontag.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Human Rights Campaign. “The Lies and Dangers of Efforts to Change Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity.” Human Right Campaign. N.d. Web. 26 May. 2017.
[22] Sontag.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Human Rights Campaign. “The Lies and Dangers of Efforts to Change Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity.”
[26] Sontag.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Hogstrom.
[29] Fanning.
[30] Hogstrom.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Gray, Lisa. “The Transgender Menace Next Door.” HoustonPress. 28 Jun. 2001. Web. 26 May. 2017.
[33] Hogstrom.
[34] Sontag.
[35] Hogstrom.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Fanning.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Sontag.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Hogstrom.
[46] Sontag.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Hogstrom,.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Sontag.
[58] Ibid.
[59] Hogstrom.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Sontag.
[63] Ibid.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Ibid.
[66] Wright.
[67] Berg, Alex. “Meet the Man Who Could Become America’s First Openly Trans Male Judge.” Huffington Post. 13 May 2017. Web. 26 May 2017.

]]><![CDATA[Catherine Thomas: A Renaissance Woman]]>Fri, 31 Mar 2017 15:55:32 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/catherine-thomas-a-renaissance-woman

by Emily Garmon

I first met Catherine Thomas when I was interning for Resurgens Theatre Company during my senior year of college. Catherine had been the skilled costumer for Resurgens for the last few years. When I first asked her to be profiled on Beyond the Magnolias, Catherine told me she was incredibly flattered. On the day of our interview, she shared with me again her excitement to be considered a remarkable southern woman. Catherine viewed past profiles on Beyond the Magnolias, and she felt she was certainly “not in this class of people.” From the little I did know about Catherine, I already knew this was not true. By the end of our interview, I learned Catherine is a wife, mother, cancer survivor, costumer, actress, singer, fencer, baker, avid reader, and so much more. After getting to know more about Catherine’s diversified talents and interests, it became clear she is quite the Renaissance woman.

After seeing Catherine’s artistry at work first hand in Resurgens’ productions of The Alchemist, Volpone, and Sejanus, I was convinced she had been formally trained. When I asked her how long she had been costuming, Catherine responded she has been sewing since she was 10 years old, and the first to model her original costuming were her Barbie dolls. Catherine described the costumes and dresses of her early years as “pretty hideous.” When I asked her what attracted her to sewing and costuming, she simply said, “I have always been fascinated with what people wear and why.” Astonishingly, Catherine is completely self-taught through trial-and-error, as well as reading numerous books on the subject. Despite her authenticity and sumptuous abilities, Catherine feels her lack of formal training creates “gaps in what she can do.” Her supposed limitations are nonexistent to any onlookers of her work. However, Catherine does give herself some credit – when describing her thorough research process while she is costuming, she proudly proclaimed, “I know what I am doing historically.” It must be said that academia, language, history, and other cultures are no stranger to Catherine. She attended the University of South Carolina, where she studied Foreign Language and minored in Comparative Literature. Her talents, as well as her educational background, have served her well while working with Resurgens Theatre Company.

Resurgens Theatre Company produces the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Dr. Brent Griffin, the Artistic Director of the company, employs numerous original practices in these productions. These original practices include, but are not limited to, judicious editing, thematic doubling, same-sex casting, minimalist staging, original pronunciation, and of course, Renaissance costuming. Nearly three years ago, Catherine attended a Resurgens production for the first time. After the performance, Catherine introduced herself to Dr. Griffin and, later in the year, he asked her to come on board as his talented, knowledgeable, and historically accurate costumer. However, Resurgens is known for staffing individuals with an array of abilities, and Catherine is no exception.

In the spring of 2015, Catherine was set to make her acting debut with Resurgens in John Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed. However, due to a cancer diagnosis, Catherine was unable to perform in the production. As a testament to her strength and determination, Catherine miraculously continued to do the costuming for the production despite her battle with cancer. In the fall of 2016, once Catherine’s health had stabilized, she finally made her acting debut with Resurgens as Lady Would-Be in Ben Jonson’s Volpone. As someone who worked on this production and sat in the audience, I can attest that Catherine was well worth the wait. In this performance, Catherine perfectly embodied the vexatious and promiscuous nature of Lady Would-Be and garnered many laughs from the audience.

Currently, Catherine is working tirelessly on Resurgens’ special Shakespeare Association of America (SAA) remount of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Although an enriching and fascinating conversation from beginning to end, I was most impressed with Catherine while we discussed this upcoming production. In the midst of her expanding on her technique and ideas for the show, she would suddenly interject with a mental note such as, “Oh! We need the bloody sheet for Malfi!” This aspect of our conversation revealed the amount of physical labor, thought, organization, and creativity that goes into Catherine’s costuming. She went on to excitedly analyze a scene from Malfi. In the scene she referenced, she illustrated how the colors will come together and connect with the plot and theme of the play. Not only does she tie her costuming into the plot, but she also adheres to things specific as fabric laws of the period. Furthermore, she demonstrated how she took the characters’ class into consideration, as she does not want to “dress a character above his or her station.” More specifically, she explained that a poor character would not be wearing a deep, rich color such as red because the dye would suggest that clothing was far too expensive for the individual. Finally, we spoke about the challenges thematic doubling presents for a costumer: “You want the audience to know there are three different characters and it’s not just the same guy changing clothes.” While this endless amount of thought and exertion may overwhelm some, Catherine relishes the challenge.

According to Catherine, one of the joys of working for Resurgens is the creative freedom the company offers. Catherine said, “It is important for me to implement my own design. I am still working within the design plan of the period but I am not restricted.” Unfortunately, I must refrain from spoiler alerts, so I cannot go into great detail concerning her costuming plans, but I am confident Resurgens will have the best dressed actors in Atlanta. If you would like to see Catherine’s work come to life on stage, the show dates are April 3, 4, 5, and 7 at 7:30 pm at the Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta.

Occasionally, Catherine steps out of the 16th and 17th centuries and exercises her costuming abilities in other areas. For instance, in addition to Medieval and Renaissance periods, Catherine is fascinated with the Civil War era. She has participated in reenactment societies and created a period gown for the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Moreover, she enjoys creating Star Wars and Game of Thrones-themed costumes. She even makes costumes for herself and for her family to attend Dragon Con together, and her work has been awarded at these various events. This is not surprising as Catherine’s resourcefulness and creativity knows no bounds – during our chat, she explained how she often channels her inner Scarlett O’Hara by making dresses from curtains and even shower curtains!

When Catherine is not costuming or engaged in one of her many other hobbies and talents, she is a dedicated wife and mother of three. Endearingly, the dedication and support from her family is clearly reciprocated. On the night of our interview, she and her husband operated like a well-oiled machine, navigating dinner, homework, and extracurricular activities as a team. Last fall, after Catherine’s performance in Volpone, I had the pleasure of meeting one of her daughters . She also shared sweet anecdotes of her college-aged son helping her shop for costuming-related books. Overall, the Thomas’ family dynamic is characterized by love, support, and shared interests.

Initially, Catherine worried she would not be in the same class as the other women featured in Beyond the Magnolias. While her humility is enchanting, it is obviously far from the truth. Catherine’s endless list of talents, education, natural ability, brilliance, and zest for life places her into the class list of the best. Catherine Thomas truly is the Renaissance woman.

Emily Garmon is a 2017 graduate of the University of North Georgia where she studied English Literature and Gender Studies. She recently landed her first job as a Project Coordinator at GetUWired, an internet marketing firm that works solely with small businesses. Emily has a passion for English Renaissance Drama, Southern Gothic Literature, and all things related to Gone With the Wind. In her free time, Emily enjoys reading, spending time with her family, traveling to Savannah every time the opportunity presents itself, and binge-watching Friends on Netflix.

]]><![CDATA[Melissa Greeson: Making It Through a Difficult Situation]]>Wed, 22 Feb 2017 13:38:58 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/melissa-greeson-making-it-through-a-difficult-situation

by Victoria S. Jacquet

Melissa Greeson was just nineteen years old when she discovered she was pregnant with her first child, Kailey Lynn. She was nervous at the thought of what others would think about the pregnancy, and also not knowing what to expect out of the experience. However, her excitement to meet Kailey quashed any last bit of that anxiety. “I actually called my mom to my house, and I gave her a present [because] we were really excited. I was her baby who was about to have a baby,” Greeson says. Never would she have imagined the traumatic events that unfolded on the day of her beautiful Kailey’s birth.

Greeson was in labor for nearly nineteen hours with Kailey Lynn: “I was exhausted, obviously, and towards the end of her labor [there were] signs that something was wrong. [Kailey] was in distress—I was in distress, but again I was only nineteen so I really didn’t know what was going on. I just knew that it wasn’t the fairytale that everybody talked about and not what I envisioned as becoming a mom for the first time.” By the time Kailey Lynn entered the world, she was not breathing. Whatever joy Greeson experienced immediately turned into a terror when Kailey was placed on oxygen to assist her respirations: “In time she started breathing on her own, which I didn’t expect because she was purple. She didn’t cry for a while, and she was really lifeless, so I was extremely scared. [Kailey] spent fifteen days in the NICU with ups and downs. They told me that I should basically pull the plug and take her off of life support—that she would be a vegetable, and I would never forgive myself for allowing her to live, which was hard to hear. I chose not to go down that route. In time they took her off of life support and she lived. I don’t know how, but it’s definitely a blessing.”

Shortly before Kailey's discharge from the hospital, Greeson received another devastating blow: “Before we left the NICU they told me she had epilepsy. She had a lot of swelling on her brain, [and they said we] had to see a regular pediatrician who then referred her to a neurologist. The neurologist who was following her did some scans of her brain and said that she had injuries to the brain. Injury can come from lack of oxygen, or like physical injury, and hers was from lack of oxygen.”

Greeson, then a single mother, stumbled upon an unexpected discovery that marked the beginning of a nearly thirteen-year-long successful legal battle: “I was actually watching MTV, and I saw a commercial about ‘your child’s diagnosis,’ what birth injuries were, and [it mentioned] cerebral palsy as a common birth injury.” Greeson spent some time contacting different firms regarding Kailey’s case and was referred to others. At this time, Kailey was about three months old and still suffering from epilepsy. Greeson "finally found one in Austin, Texas and he looked into it. One thing led into another.”

After feeling like she was getting the runaround from many doctors she went to for a medical diagnosis, Greeson turned to Kailey’s trusted neurologist, who was unfortunately dying from cancer. “Before he passed away he said that [Kailey] was too young for a formal diagnosis of cerebral palsy because they couldn’t diagnose until eighteen months or later. He said she definitely had cerebral palsy. We never saw him again, but I went with everything that he said, and he turned out to be correct,” says Greeson. Kailey’s doctors and legal counsel began to map the pieces together to discover Kailey’s condition was indeed from a birth injury caused from a lack of oxygen during delivery.

While going through Kailey’s trial, Greeson encountered uncomfortable statements that provoked a fierce determination to prove her doubters absolutely wrong: “Sitting through her case and hearing it repetitively that this child shouldn’t walk, this child shouldn’t do this, she can’t do that, she won’t do this, she’ll never go to college—that kind of stuff really just kept beating into my head. Hearing people talk about how I hadn’t gone to college so [Kailey] probably wouldn’t amount to much anyway as an adult even if she wasn’t injured really got to me, because here I was a mom of four, and again a single mom, hadn’t gone to college, did not have a career path, didn’t even know what I was going to do with myself—it just really got to me. Then talking to [Kailey’s] paralegal during her trial sparked some interest in me because she was there for me. She was my support system, and I wanted to do that for other families.” Greeson enrolled herself in the Paralegal Studies program at Athens Technical College to fulfill her goal of becoming a paralegal to assist others who were experiencing similar situations she had gone through with Kailey’s case. Greeson excelled in her studies and was even the President of the Student Paralegal Association on campus. She graduated from the program in 2016 and has since worked in a law firm handling birth injury cases. When humbly reflecting on her exciting accomplishments, Greeson states, “I didn’t get the dreams I had hoped for at first, but it was a good experience that kind of got my foot in the door as a paralegal. [My job] is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I feel like I can be there for other families—not just from a legal aspect, but I can help them through the emotional times and support system that they may not have through their families as I do with mine. Helping them with therapies—it’s just really helped me. Sitting through [Kailey Lynn’s] case is what inspired me to do better for myself and for my kids, and mostly her because she can’t live the life that we all dream about, but I can. She inspired me to do that.”

Greeson gives credit to Kailey Lynn, her mother, and her sister for helping her get through the most difficult periods throughout the trial: “I think ultimately my strength came from [Kailey Lynn] because I ended up being a single mom to her, and I knew that if I wasn’t there for her, nobody else was going to be there for her. I turned to my mom and my sister a lot for guidance [and] emotional support. I kind of had to use them to balance me out because I felt like I was more of a caregiver and a nurse to the baby than her mom at times because there was so much entailed. She was on medication almost immediately, and she’s still on it at fourteen years old for epilepsy. She’ll be on it for the rest of her life, so I constantly turn to the two of them for—I guess more so for emotional support. And they were kind of my back bone.

“I had to learn a lot through Kailey—a lot about therapy. [She wasn’t] meeting her milestones that most babies meet, so we had to come through that. I was told that she would not walk or talk. I was not giving up on that, and I’m still not giving up on that kind of stuff. She walks now, she talks, she can ride a bicycle—just things that are absolutely amazing and I do contribute it to that the fact that I guess being a younger mother, I was not going to give up hope. A lot of people, you know, get a diagnosis and decide that’s what they’re going to live by. I think hope, family support, and really pushing her made the difference.”

When asked about Kailey Lynn’s hobbies, Greeson states she is passionate about music. Just recently, Greeson took Kailey on a trip to New York to see her all-time favorite artist, Justin Bieber, as he performed his last concert for his U.S. tour in 2016. “Everything that they said she couldn’t do and that wouldn’t be a reachable goal for her is the things that she loves to do. Swimming, riding her bike, music—she can’t sing like you and I can because she has a significant speech delay. She’s on about a three to four year old’s age level as far as speech goes. To her, she’s singing beautiful music, and to me as her mom, its beautiful to hear words coming out of that mouth,” Greeson says. Greeson and Kailey also participate in events held by the group Extra Special People (ESP), which is a community for families with special children. “Having Kailey opened my eyes to other people’s abilities and disabilities. There are some children and young adults who are more severe than she is, and there are some who are not as severe as she is. But all parents have to deal with that through their own way. We’re not all the same, but if we all meet in these little groups and talk, it definitely helps relieve some of the stress to know that you are not all alone. I started helping, and she started attending ESP in 2010 . . . We had gone to several other support groups for parents with special needs children and I didn’t feel welcomed because I was still the young parent, and they used names like ‘retarded’ which was really hard to hear. I didn’t like that. When I reached out to ESP, we felt really welcomed and knowing that those people were more like family to each other was what we needed at that time. Kailey gets to attend summer camp with them, and she’s in a beauty pageant once a year. It’s not like your typical beauty pageant. They focus on the person as an individual and the things they can do, and it’s not about what one person can do better than the other—it’s just each individual. I’ve also jumped out of an airplane to help donate to help send other children to the camp whose parents won’t be able to afford without the help. There’s a lot of events with them but it’s more of a family things even if you are not blood family. We all know what we’re going through one way or another, so it really helps.

“One thing I would mention that keeps me going as a special mom is the fact that I would like to raise social awareness. I would really like for people to realize that having cerebral palsy is not a disease. She's not contagious, she's not disgusting—she's a human with feelings too. To do this, [I] keep her active in all kinds of community programs. We don't just do this for special needs, but we really focus on anything that keeps her active and involved in the community,” Greeson states.

Greeson encourages those who are walking through life with any struggles, especially those whose struggles are similar to hers, to “find that one glimpse of hope to pull yourself up. It is really helpful not giving up. There is always tomorrow, and if you give up the other person wins. If you don’t give up, and you just find your own inner strength, it feels really good to be able to overcome a situation that people say you won’t be able to.”

Victoria S. Jacquet is a proud litigation paralegal in Athens, Georgia. She graduated from Athens Technical College in 2016 with an Associates of Applied Science Degree in Paralegal Studies. She is currently a student at the University of North Georgia studying to obtain a Bachelors in Applied Science Degree in Paralegal Studies. Victoria enjoys writing in her off time as well as studying film and music.

]]><![CDATA[Jesmyn Ward: Writing “Fiercely and Honestly” About the South]]>Thu, 19 Jan 2017 05:00:00 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/jesmyn-ward-writing-fiercely-and-honestly-about-the-south

by Cameron Williams Crawford

Jesmyn Ward, 2011. Photo by Jesmimi. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

I should probably begin by stating that this post is basically my love letter to Jesmyn Ward, who, since I discovered Salvage the Bones a couple of years ago, has quickly become one of my favorite and most-admired writers. Ward’s writing is exquisite; it’s graceful and lush with metaphor. She is the kind of rare storyteller able to find splendor in savagery, who can make you smile at the same time that she breaks your heart. In her relatively short career as a writer, she has produced a number of important pieces of work for feminism, African American literature, and for Southern literature (which, let’s be honest, largely continues to be the domain of white men). As both a scholar and enthusiastic bookworm, that is incredibly exciting for me. So, imagine my delight (read: fangirl freakout) when I learned that Ward would be reading from her new collection of essays and poems about race, The Fire This Time, at the Carter Center here in Atlanta this past August. Joined by other great writers and contributors to the collection—including Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, and Kevin Young—the event was, to say the least, an edifying experience. In the wake of the recent shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, it was especially poignant. The Fire This Time, which takes its title from James Baldwin’s 1963 book of essays on race in America, The Fire Next Time, “channel[s] Baldwin’s urgency toward reflecting on black life in America” and carries on a discussion that remains very necessary.[1] In an interview with Audie Cornish on NPR’s All Things Considered, Ward addressed the need for continuing to talk about race: “If we don’t, [and] if it’s a conversation that we walk away from because we’re too tired of having it, then nothing really changes.”[2] Such is the nature of all Ward’s writing, really; though here she may be specifically referring to race, a similar sentiment persists throughout her work. Her two novels and her memoir each carry on essential conversations about the cruel realities of race, poverty, and gender in ways that are sometimes gut wrenching, yet honest and, importantly, not without a sense of hope.

Me with Jesmyn Ward at the Carter Center event for The Fire This Time, where I am telling her way more than she probably cared to know about my ideas for teaching Salvage the Bones.

Ward was raised in DeLisle, a small, rural town located along the Mississippi coast. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2005, where she won a number of awards for her fiction.[3] Around this same time, Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, causing extreme loss of life and displacing more than a million residents. Ward and her family were among those devastated by the storm, forced to flee their home when the rising floodwaters threatened their lives. Notably, Ward’s experiences during Katrina play an integral role in her novels, “which subtly blend the creative and the personal, the imagined and the remembered.”[4]

Ward’s first novel, Where the Line Bleeds, was published in 2008 and draws on her upbringing in a rural, impoverished, post-Katrina community on the Gulf Coast. The novel follows the lives of twin brothers, Christophe and Joshua DeLisle, who struggle to find work and relieve their family from poverty after graduating from high school. Joshua secures a job for himself working on the docks; Christophe, however, becomes entangled in a drug-dealing operation. In a review from The Austin Chronicle, Elizabeth Jackson notes the “original and subversive implications” of Ward’s style, remarking on how her prose “recalls William Faulkner.” As Jackson writes, through invoking the “(white) father of Southern letters,” Ward—a black woman writer whose fiction explores the lives of poor, rural, black families—“seems to push against the typically one-directional phenomenon of (for instance) millions of white men mimicking gut-rot Delta blues.”[5] Where the Line Bleeds, as Ward’s other work continues to do, advocates for more diverse and complex representation, particularly of people of color, in literature. Ward herself has explained, “I understood that I wanted to write about the experiences of the poor, and the black and the rural people of the South … so that the culture that marginalized us for so long would see that our stories were as universal, our lives as fraught and lovely and important, as theirs.”[6] In Where the Line Bleeds, Ward offers a compassionate, nuanced portrayal of a marginalized group of people so often reduced to demeaning stereotypes.

From 2008-2010, Ward held a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, and in 2011, acted as the Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi.[7] In 2011, she published her second novel, Salvage the Bones, which really began as an essay for The Oxford American that detailed her own personal account of Katrina.[8] The novel takes place over the course of the twelve days leading up to Hurricane Katrina’s landfall and tells the fictional story of fifteen-year-old Esch Batiste, newly and unexpectedly pregnant and living with her three brothers and father in “the Pit,” a poor, predominantly black neighborhood on the fringes of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. On a personal note, I taught this novel this past semester in my Gender and Literature course. Not only did it prove to be a hit with my students (who do not always enjoy the novels I assign), it exposed them to a counter-narrative that’s too often ignored. Salvage the Bones “gives voice to the experiences of those wounded and displaced by the storm” and confronts the all-too-common response to the disaster that blames victims for not following mandatory government-issued directives to evacuate.[9] “My family has been poor and working class for generations,” Ward says in an interview with Gwen Ifill, “And we live—I live in this really small community in Southern Mississippi, where you don’t evacuate, and you have never evacuated because there are too many people in your family to evacuate.”[10] In another interview, in response to a question about why she chose to write about Hurricane Katrina, Ward says, “I was angry at the people who blamed survivors for staying and for choosing to return to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after the storm.”[11] Particularly compelling is how the novel interrogates the intersection of gender and race and explores the many ways in which cultural and historical traumas are acted out on the bodies of women. “Bodies tell stories,” says fifteen-year-old Esch, pregnant with the child of a neighbor boy who doesn’t love her and with no access to women’s healthcare or birth control. By drawing parallels between Esch’s pregnancy and the oncoming Hurricane Katrina, Ward makes conspicuous “the interactions of assumptions about race, gender, and dependency and the conscious underfunding of government that [were] evident” in the regional and national response to victims of Katrina.[12] Salvage the Bones won the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction.

Ward lived through the national tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina, and her experience during the storm and its aftermath inform much of her writing. She also endured a far more personal tragedy in 2000, when her younger brother was killed in an accident with a drunk driver. Ward has spoken openly about her family’s tragic loss and how it has haunted her. On a segment from Fresh Air, Ward discusses the tattoo on her wrist: it’s her brother’s name, and it helped her deal with the despair, depression, and suicidal thoughts she struggled with following his death.[13] She has also said that she began writing as a way to honor her brother.[14] In 2013, she published Men We Reaped, a memoir that explores the lives and untimely deaths of her brother and four other young black men from her hometown. Men We Reaped is a deeply personal look at “how the history of racism and economic inequality and lapsed public and personal responsibility festered and turned sour and spread” through her hometown and others like it.[15] In the prologue, she acknowledges this story as the hardest one she’s had to write, as well as one she feels compelled to write—to make sense of her friends’ and brother’s deaths and the circumstances surrounding them, but also to share their stories, their lives, and restore “flesh to the bones of statistics.”[16]

Like her other work, Men We Reaped is absolutely heartbreaking. It’s also profoundly resonant, particularly in this divisive, Trumpian political climate that pervades the entire nation, not just the South. Literature is a powerful tool for social justice, and Ward wields it decisively, giving all of her readers something to learn from: she inspires us to listen to the stories and experiences of others that are perhaps different from our own, and she encourages us to approach them with understanding and compassion.

----------

[1] “‘The Fire This Time’: A New Generation Of Writers On Race In America.” NPR, 2 Aug. 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Jesmyn Ward.” Lyceum Agency, 2017.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Jackson, Elizabeth. “Review: Where the Line Bleeds.” The Austin Chronicle, 19 Dec. 2008.
[6] Bosman, Julie. “National Book Awards Go to ‘Salvage the Bones’ and ‘Swerve.’” The New York Times, 16 Nov. 2011.
[7] “Jesmyn Ward.”
[8] Marotte, Mary Ruth. “Pregnancies, Storms, and Legacies of Loss in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones.” Ten Years After Katrina: Critical Perspectives of the Storm’s Effect on American Culture and Identity, edited by Mary Ruth Marotte and Glenn Jellenik, Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 207-19.
[9] Marotte, Mary Ruth and Glenn Jellenik. “Introduction: Reading Hurricane Katrina.” Ten Years After Katrina: Critical Perspectives of the Storm’s Effect on American Culture and Identity, edited by Mary Ruth Marotte and Glenn Jellenik, Lexington Books, 2015, pp. vii-xiv.
[10] “Writer Jesmyn Ward Reflects on Survival Since Katrina.” PBS Newshour, 24 Aug. 2015.
[11] Ward, Jesmyn. Men We Reaped, Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 263.
[12] Adrian, Lynne M. “Definitions and Disasters: What Hurricane Katrina Revealed About Women’s Rights.” Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table, 22 Dec. 2007.
[13] “‘Reaped’ is a Reminder that No One is Promised Tomorrow.” NPR, 24 Sep. 2013.
[14] Bosman.
[15] Ward, 8.
[16] Jones, Tayari. “In Their Prime: Men We Reaped: A Memoir, by Jesmyn Ward.” The New York Times, 13 Sep. 2013.

]]><![CDATA[All the Reese-ons to Love Reese Witherspoon]]>Fri, 18 Nov 2016 12:24:01 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/all-the-reese-ons-to-love-reese-witherspoon

by Amber Richards

Reese Witherspoon in the Oval Office on June 25, 2009. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Reese Witherspoon is not only an absolutely stunning and talented actress, she is a role model for many teenage girls and women across the world, including myself. From her home-grown roots, she is as down-to-earth and Southern as she comes across in movies like Walk The Line or Sweet Home Alabama.

Laura Jeanna Reese Witherspoon (which is her real name) was born on March 22, 1976 in “New Orleans, Louisiana but raised in Nashville, Tennessee. She is the second child Dr. John Draper Witherspoon, “a military surgeon specializing in ear, nose and throat,” and Mary Elizabeth “Betty” Witherspoon, “a registered nurse who later became a pediatric nurse.” [1] Living in Nashville, Reese was surrounded by famous country musicians, inspiring artists trying to make their way, and actors and actresses that had made it successfully, which somewhat helped her choose acting as a career.

Reese’s story is not close to any “rags to riches” tale; she was an upper-class young lady who “attended an all-girls private school and was later a debutante,” [2] but she had the ambition and motivation to earn fifty-one awards (including an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2005) and be nominated for eighty-seven awards.[3] Although acting was not her first choice for a career—“Reese went to Stanford University for her freshman year in college (which she did not complete)”[4]—she took a leap of faith and put her whole education on hold for to pursue acting, which would soon impact her life in the most positive and rewarding ways. As an actress, she chooses roles that empower women; through her roles, such as those in Legally Blonde, Walk the Line, Sweet Home Alabama and Cruel Intentions, she shows that any woman can accomplish any dream that comes to mind. “I choose the roles I do because I want my daughter to see what strong, accomplished women are like,” Reese stated in an interview.[5] With three children now, one girl and two boys, she says that they “get the point” on how important it is to follow their dreams and not let anyone or anything stop them, and this is a message she strives to share with the whole world as well.[6] In another interview, she said that if she had one quote she would like the share with other women, it would be, “The thing about ascending is that you have to keep going. The thing about going beyond, is that you have to go. You have to keep rising.”[7] This is truly inspiring, helping and motivating women all across the world with progressing toward any goal, and Reese Witherspoon herself lives by the same quote daily and shows how true it really is.

Personally, my favorite role of hers is the 2001 hit that really put her on the map, Legally Blonde, where she plays Elle Woods. Throughout the whole film, Elle Woods smashes anyone that doubts her becoming a killer lawyer with perfectly manicured fists. She shows that most girls have to go through the Elle Woods crying-alone-in-a-bunny-costume phase to get to your Elle Woods kicking-ass-at-law-school/life phase. Needless to say, Elle Woods is unapologetically ambitious, just as many young women should aspire to be. My other all-time favorite is Walk the Line. Witherspoon takes on a huge role of playing June Carter, wife of the famous country musician, Johnny Cash. June Carter is a woman that doesn’t settle and is incredibly fierce, Witherspoon plays her just like the shoe fits, as if she was born for the role. She brings her own sweet, sassy, and classy charm into the role and helps relive one of the creators of country music today, June Carter. And of course, she also shows the beautiful love story between June Carter and Johnny Cash. She plays the role, portraying how independent, loyal, and strong-minded June was.

With these and other roles, Reese says, “I don’t play any weak characters because I’ve never seen a weak woman! And it’s like we are all scared of being marked as the girl who is really ambitious—as if it was a bad thing!”[8] She wants every woman to feel the importance they have and believes that they should never apologize for being magnificent at everything they do, that instead of hiding it, they should embrace it so much more to show how powerful we are as women and, most importantly, be proud of it.

Reese Witherspoon does more than just show her feminism through her acting; she also has a beautiful heart in the real world. Even though many people are not aware, she is a philanthropist for many notable charities and foundations across the country. She also supports causes for “abuse, adoption, civil rights, and gender equality.”[9] She receives very little recognition for her acts of servitude and kindness, but still continues to carry them out for the greater good. Not many people even know that she was picked to be Global Ambassador for Avon, a widely known company, in 2007. “Avon contributes to women’s causes for domestic violence and empowerment,”[10] which shows everything Reese supports and strongly believes in. As a global ambassador for Avon, Reese has the honor of speaking all over the country about what Avon stands for, and she has kept this honor for nearly ten years. Keep in mind, “she is an actress and not a public speaker”[11], so this is a whole new ballpark for Reese. However, she still speaks flawlessly and powerfully about the causes she advocates.

She acts for and stands for what she wants her daughter to see growing up, and this shows throughout the many roles she plays as an actress and her career with Avon. Whether she is Elle Woods, June Carter, or a renowned spokeswoman, Reese Witherspoon is a successful philanthropist and role model for women of all ages.

Amber Richards is an eighteen-year old nursing major at the University of North Georgia. She was inspired to become a nurse by her Aunt Lisa, who is an amazing nurse practitioner that puts a lot of pride into what she does, which makes the hard journey of becoming a nurse so much more bearable. She also has very supporting parents, Jeff and Crystal Richards, to help her along this four-year journey. During her down time, if and when she does get any, she likes to hang out with her three-year-old niece, Ellie, attend as many UGA basketball games as she can, go fishing with her sister, and, of course, she also enjoys a little binge-watching on Netflix every once in a while.

[1] “Reese Witherspoon.” Biography.com, A&E Television Networks, 6 Jun. 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Reese Witherspoon: Awards.” IMDb, 2016.
[4] "Reese Witherspoon."
[5] “Quotes.” Glamour Reese Witherspoon, 2011.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Bronner, Sasha. “Reese Witherspoon Talks ‘Weak’ Female Characters And One Thing Women Should Focus On In 2014.” The Huffington Post, 4 Mar. 2014.
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Reese Witherspoon: Charity Work, Events and Causes.” Look to the Stars, 2016.
[10] Avon Products, Inc. “Avon Signs Reese Witherspoon as First Ever Global Ambassador.” PRNewswire, 1 Aug. 2007.
[11] “Reese Witherspoon: Actress and Global Ambassador.” Lean In, n.d.

]]><![CDATA[A Beautiful Mind: Carson McCullers]]>Tue, 20 Sep 2016 13:13:22 GMThttp://www.beyondthemagnolias.com/archived-profiles/a-beautiful-mind-carson-mccullers

by Alexis Sharbel

Carson McCullers. Photo by Carl Van Vechten. July 31, 1959. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

When I think of Carson McCullers, two words come to mind: beautiful and chaotic. McCullers was so fluent in her writing and descriptions; one feels connected not only to her characters, but also to McCullers herself. Part of that feeling is because McCullers often included personal elements—including the frustrations and confusion she often experienced—in her writing. To help understand this, particularly McCullers’s use of queer identities in her fiction, one must first look at her life as well as her writing.

Carson McCullers was born as Lula Carson Smith in 1917 in Columbus, Georgia. She changed her name to simply Carson Smith when she moved to New York. Carson originally moved to New York to attend Julliard to pursue a career in music, mostly the piano.[1] She then became Reeves McCullers in 1937. McCullers was known for her struggles with rheumatic fever, which caused her to experience multiple strokes and physical issues. This is part of the reason as to why McCullers strayed from music and pursued her passion for writing. Most of her best novels and stories were written while she was in the throes of sickness and sometimes bedridden.[2]

Carson McCullers was married for only four years before the two separated. The main issue that occurred while they were together: they both were alcoholics and suffered reoccurring depression. They also both identified themselves as bisexual.[3] This part of McCullers life was “destructive,” as she and her husband were both very sexually active with men and women alike.[4] They also were somewhat in competition with their writing, and often Carson was in the lead. They divorced in 1941, largely due to jealousy and competition. Both Carson and Reeves fell in love with the same man, David Diamond, which caused Carson and Reeves to tear apart while competing for Diamond’s love.[5]

McCullers’s writing can be described as beautiful, relatable, and influential. While incorporating real life experiences, McCullers had the ability to show readers the significance of learning how to understand who they were. It is one of the many things that set McCullers apart from the other writers at that time.

McCullers’s first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), is about six individuals who take solace in a deaf mute boy. At the heart of this novel are profound themes of “loneliness and isolation.”[6] This novel is important for a number of reasons. As a young woman who just started professionally writing, this novel was a piece of art. It was not taken lightly that McCullers was capable of such poetic greatness at such a young age.[7] It is also important for a very odd reason. One character was unfortunately cut from the novel before it was published. The name of that character is Lily Mae Jenkins, a homosexual, African American man who often cross-dresses. During the time period in which this novel was published, same-sex relationships were looked down upon. For this reason, McCullers’s publisher cut off this pivotal character. Harold Bloom describes Lily Mae as serving “an example of the isolated, shunned, and lonely character; an emblem of the fundamental isolated nature of all humans.”[8] Most importantly, Lily Mae served as a crutch. Jenkins was meant to be a “distraction” from the other character’s own reality.[9] Carson McCullers would remain to use Lily Mae as an example in future novels, such as The Member of the Wedding (1946).

The Member of the Wedding is one of the most important novels of McCullers’ career. The novel is about a young pre-teen who is trying to find her place in the world. The novel is important because it explores a very intimate topic for McCullers, which is that of conformity to gender roles. The main character, Frankie Addams, changes her name multiple times using both masculine and feminine uses of the name Frances and also the name Jasmine. She also has a boy’s haircut and is often considered “rough” and “mean.” All of these things are signs that Frankie challenges her gender role as a female. Through her fiction, such as The Member of the Wedding, McCullers wanted to show people that exploring their mind and actions was okay. She believed that people could gradually understand and express their sexuality, and she understood that people cannot continue to see gender as exclusively binary.
Another piece from McCullers is titled The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951). This novel is about a complicated love triangle filled with “jealousy and obsession.”[10] This triangle is said to be inspired by the triangle between McCullers, her husband, and Diamond. While using her own personal struggles, McCullers was able to explore same-sex love between the characters Marvin and Lymon, though readers cannot be certain of what type of infatuation existed between the two.

For Carson McCullers, writing was not merely a way to make money; she made art. McCullers did not believe that gender should be defined by society, which she expressed through her writing. Carson McCullers used great understanding to get to the hearts of those who have lost themselves. She showed the lost that it is okay to feel isolated. Through isolation, the lost can find themselves and their freedom. McCullers’s writing will forever be a guide to those who are beginning to learn and accept themselves, whether it involves their gender, race, or status.

Alexis Sharbel is currently in the early childhood and special education program at the University of North Georgia. She recently discovered just how passionate she is about teaching. She thinks she works best with special education atmospheres. Whenever she has time, she likes to sit down and read a great book. Her top three favorite authors include Jeannette Walls, Toni Morrison, and Janet Fitch. She would also would like to start volunteering for the boys and girls club. Alexis loves to read and write because it connects her with her inner yearning for understanding, differentiating viewpoints, and diversity within the crazy world in which we live. She believes she is a kind, respectful person who always puts others before herself.

[1] Dews, Carlos. "Carson McCullers (1917-1967)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. N.p., 04 Sept. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] McKinnie, Betty E. and Carlos L. Dews. “The Delayed Entrance of Lily Mae Jenkins: Queer Identity, Gender Ambiguity, and Southern Ambivalence in Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding.” Carson McCullers. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009. Print. 88.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Dews.

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